Agility re­ports $228mn net profit in 2017

Agility re­ported a net profit of KWD68.5MN for 2017, as against KWD59.1MN in the pre­vi­ous year, mark­ing an in­crease of 16%. Rev­enue for the year reached KWD1.4BN and EBITDA was KWD135.2MN.

For the fourth quar­ter (Q4) 2017, Agility re­ported a net profit of KWD19.3MN, or 15.3 fils per share, an in­crease of 22.5% over Q4 2016. EBITDA for Q4 2017 was KWD37.6MN, an in­crease of 19.8%.

Tarek Sul­tan, Agility CEO and vice chair­man, said: “In 2017, Agility posted an­other year of healthy growth and con­tin­ued to plant the seeds for a fu­ture of sus­tain­able growth. To reach our tar­get of $800mn EBITDA by 2020, we re­mained fo­cused on im­prov­ing GIL’S per­for­mance and in­vest­ing in our in­fra­struc­ture com­pa­nies. For ev­ery busi­ness in the group, 2017 was a crit­i­cal year.”

Agility Global In­te­grated Lo­gis­tics (GIL) rev­enue grew 14.3% to KWD1.06BN in 2017. The in­crease is at­trib­ut­able to growth in the freight for­ward­ing busi­ness and con­tract lo­gis­tics. Full year net rev­enue grew 2.6%. Net rev­enue mar­gins shrunk to 23.7% from 26.4% amid yield pres­sure across the in­dus­try.

In Q4, GIL rev­enue was KWD293MN, a 21.5% in­crease over Q4 2016. Air and ocean rev­enue were up 25% on air ton­nage growth of 9.7% and a 12% in­crease in ocean TEUS. Con­tract lo­gis­tics and spe­cial­ties (Project Lo­gis­tics and Fairs & Events) im­proved rev­enue 17.6% over the same pe­riod in 2016.

Fourth-quar­ter net rev­enue in­creased 6%, but net rev­enue mar­gins de­clined to 22.6% vs. 26% in Q4 2016, amid yield pres­sure through­out the freight for­ward­ing in­dus­try. Con­tract lo­gis­tics con­tin­ued its strong growth in Q4, pri­mar­ily in the Mid­dle East and Asia Pa­cific, aided by a com­bi­na­tion of new cus­tomers and in­vest­ments in new fa­cil­i­ties.